


Bloom to Blossom

by Lynae



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Fan Confidant, Gen, Jinbocho is an aesthetic, NO ROYAL SPOILERS, loosely based on tarot, no spoilers at all actually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24887332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynae/pseuds/Lynae
Summary: Hanae Satomi, uprooted from her quiet countryside life to pursue a college education, longs for the day when she can reap the rewards of her hard work. But, between her part-time job, her coursework, and the extra task of "courtship", all she can do in the meanwhile is wander the streets of Jinbocho and find solace in the pages of well-loved stories, longing for the days when she thought she could become among them.That is, until she meets a well-read young man from that high school on the news, and her stressful but simple life takes a turn for the worse.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Bloom to Blossom

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, and thanks for reading! 
> 
> Just like the tags state, this is going to be my take on a confidant arc. I hope you stick around for the ride.

The delightful sound of pen scratching on paper, the snap of a leather cover flipping back, enclosing soft white paper, tucked into a pocket. 

“ _The Master Swordsman_...” she whispered. Her eyes lingered longingly on the spine of the book as she set back onto the shelf, but now she had it within her sights. She would come to claim it someday. 

She hadn’t yet completed her farewell to the book before she heard a voice nearby. “Finished for today, Miss Satomi?” 

Satomi looked up and saw the hunched shopkeeper standing at the end of the row with a wry smile that suggested he understood he had trespassed something more than just browsing. 

“Oh, yes sir. I’m just getting this one.” She indicated the book pinched between her arm and her left side. 

“Ah, yes, _On Modern Social Thought_. Not one we sell a lot of, if you can believe it.” 

She chuckled politely and followed the old man up to the front of the store. As he took the book and began to process her purchase, her eyes wandered to the books outside the store, which, usually stacked up for display, had been pushed aside and covered with a tarp, owing to the torrential rain falling outside. 

“Here you go, Miss Satomi. Take care out there.” His eyes flickered over to the street side where large puddles were already forming. 

“Thank you, sir. Have a good evening.” 

With the book securely tucked away in her bag, she stepped out towards the edge of the awning, where a sheet of dripping water stood between her and the monsoon. Perhaps she had dressed for the wrong kind of summer, and she frowned down at her white sundress. Ah well, she couldn’t stand there forever. 

She made it to the train station as wet as though she had swam there. With her down-turned head still dripping onto the tile, she mumbled a request for a flimsy umbrella to the station’s convenience store worker, and, while waiting for her train to come, attempted to wipe herself dry with the pack of tissues in her bag. 

~~~

She had most certainly caught a cold. The moment that she entered her tiny apartment and threw off her soaked clothes with abandon, she felt a distinctly unwell chill in her bones. But she didn’t have a bath in her apartment, and she didn’t particularly want to head to the bathhouse around the corner in such weather. So she settled for a quick shower and a pot of tea. 

Laying on the wooden floor, covered in a towel, and with her long hair spread flat to dry, she held up _On Modern Social Thought_ over her head and skimmed the introduction. Her arms started to grow heavy as she read further and further, and she could tell it was not simply because of the book’s substantial heft. She forgave the book though; she could tell that if she hadn’t spent a hour on the subway sitting in a puddle of linen, it might have actually been quite interesting. 

Just as she felt her arms could take no more, her phone buzzed— the sound of it vibrating made her drop the book on her chest and gasp in confusion, pain, exasperation, all of the above. Her hand shot out towards the nearby table and snatched up her phone.

“Um, hi mom.” 

“Hi Hanae dear. I heard it’s storming in Tokyo. You didn’t go out today, did you?”

“No.” 

“Good. Did you have dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, good. By the way, I just wanted to say, if you don’t have any plans for your summer break, you can always come home and visit your father and I.” 

“Of course.”

“Of course, we’d definitely prefer if you found a nice young man to take you out during the festivals.”

“Yes, I’ll bring him home with me.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. This is your chance to marry a nice city man.” 

“I know. I’ll keep a lookout.”

“That’s what I want to hear. Goodnight then dear.” 

“Goodnight, mom.”

Her hair never dried very fast. It felt quite humid around her neck. 

~~~

Jinbocho, the town of books that crowded the streets in stack upon stack of pale, yellowing paper and glossy black ink, had always possessed an almost mythical mystique to Hanae Satomi. Her parents loved to joke about she became such a bookworm— she certainly hadn’t taken after either of them, in any case. But, as soon as they saw that budding desire, they nurtured it with weekly trips to their village’s tiny library, forgiving glances at the light in her bedroom at midnight, and, most of all, tales of the magical book town, where you could find any book in the world in those stacks, if you just tried hard enough. And, fueled by that deep affection, she spent her days devouring story after story, memoir after guidebook, until she had finally gotten accepted to a university in Tokyo and landed herself right in the setting of her childhood fairy tales. 

As with most days, Hanae found herself arriving in Jinbocho with no particular agenda. Since it was closer to her university than her apartment, she never could find a good enough excuse to not stop by on her way home. If she loitered around the bookstores long enough, she could avoid the evening rush on the trains, and she certainly was not opposed to stopping in a tea shop to pour over her latest acquisition for a few hours. 

“Good afternoon, Miss Satomi.” The old shopkeeper from yesterday was waving at her from the doorway of his shop. He must have stepped outside when he noticed the young man browsing the stacks outside. 

Hanae returned the gesture and, like the shopkeeper, contemplated the other customer, who wore a high school uniform, one with red checks... one that she recognized. Like every other member of society, she too had the unfortunate habit of having her eyes wander to the countless screens around her with a deeply unpleasant yet inescapable fascination with tragedy, and thus she recognized this uniform. It was last month’s story, the one about the high school gym teacher abusing students which had gotten the media and politicians in such a frenzy, but which had quickly been eclipsed for a new story as soon as one had appeared. 

So, what was a student of the infamous Shujin Academy doing at this bookstore of all things? Buying a present, perhaps? Considering its reputation for stocking rather dense literature, Hanae found it a bit unlikely that he might have come to purchase a book for his own reading pleasure. 

At least, she thought so, until she saw him slide a beautiful aged tome from underneath a tall stack with the title _The Master Swordsman_ and hand it over to the shopkeeper... 

“That book!” She couldn’t help herself. She then looked away immediately, hoping that by pretending to have not said anything, she could trick him into ignoring her. 

With his right hand still holding the book out to the shopkeeper, he looked over at her, “What about it?” 

“Oh, no— nothing! It’s just, a very l-lovely book, isn’t it?”

Now that the shopkeeper had taken the book, the boy faced his entire body toward her. Hiding no longer an option, she stood tall and looked right back. She heard her mother telling her to pay attention to her posture, but her mother probably wouldn’t approve of her trying to intimidate a high school student with her straight back and square shoulders. 

His face crinkled, lips thin and eyebrows taut, and Hanae could feel him asking a question without even opening his lips. She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her, or genuinely interested in her excuses. But, as it usually did, panic seemed to clear her mind, and she reconciled her earlier outburst with its true reason. 

“Well, you get the sense that there’s so much a book like that can teach you.”

“Is that why you read, too?”

Too? So, he meant that he was one of those types that read for self-betterment. Of course, she had nothing against it, but she herself did not approach it in such a utilitarian manner. 

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. That’s just one of many reasons I was drawn to it.” 

The boy turned to receive the bagged book from the shopkeeper, and, at that moment, Hanae felt her phone buzz— more than once. Whether it was her mom or not, she knew it couldn’t be good news.

She pulled her phone out of her bag, read the caller's name with a thrill of dread, and stepped away a few paces before responding, “Hello? Mr. Maruyama?”

“Satomi! This is the second time you haven’t met your deadlines! I better see those translations sent soon, or we’ll be having a discussion about your pay, you hear me?” Although he had screamed through the earpiece, she kept her phone pressed tight against her cheek, as though she could create an airtight seal on this embarrassment.

“Yes Mr. Maruyama sir, I understand. I’ll have the translations to you by this weekend, I promise sir.” 

"Good! I don't want to have to call you again, Satomi. Goodbye."

Wiping the transferred makeup off her phone screen before tucking it back into her purse, Hanae sighed, a sigh that slowly turned into a groan as she remembered just how large her backlog really had gotten. Even though she had really, truly been swamped with homework the past two weeks, she felt that Maruyama had already heard her mention it enough times that he now felt confident in calling homework an excuse, of all things. Publishers did not particularly like to wait. 

“You do translation?”

It was the boy again. Suddenly, she became painfully aware that he had stood there the whole time, watching her on the phone, probably watching her face pale and contort like a crumpled paper. So, while speaking about her work was the last thing she wanted to do at the moment, it also seemed like the perfect topic to distract from her moment of disgrace.

“Ah, yes I do. I work part time as a English-to-Japanese translator at a publishing company.”

“Wow, you must be really good at English then.”

She decided that it would be best to not say anything to the contrary. If she was honest with herself, this random high school student probably had better English speaking skills than her, considering that he probably still had to practice it in classes.

“Do you come to this store often?”

“Yes, I do. Why do you ask?” 

He scratched his neck, and Hanae guessed that he did not particularly know why he asked either, but humored his awkward silence as he formulated his answer: “The shopkeeper has offered to let me buy more of his books, if I can finish this one.” He lifted up the bag. 

“So, what you’re saying is, we might meet each other here.”

He nodded, and the glare of the setting sun briefly caused his glasses to turn white, obscuring his eyes, so Hanae had no clue as to whether he genuinely wanted to meet her again or not. 

But, she supposed, what could be the harm in meeting him again?


End file.
